Parish Council News

Councillors old and new

It is with regret that we announce another resignation, that of John Brine who was a great Chairman for a number of years and who was instrumental in ensuring that Gaydon Parish kept its village status. He attended many meetings with the District Council and other local parishes to ensure that the new town did not include us. He represented us on the Gaydon Liaison Committee and made JLR aware of our views regarding lighting, traffic and flooding. Working with Tom Hughes he produced very detailed planning responses to the Gaydon Service Station, GLH, JLR and the Gaydon Inn, to name but a few. He spent many hours clearing vegetation in the cemetery alongside JLR and, more recently, Cllr John Davies and our contractor. He will be a great loss to this parish council. John has wanted to resign for a number of months but as a resident who truly cares for this parish he had no wish to see our Parish Council be controlled by Stratford District Council. If he had left we would no longer have been quorate and so he remained until another resident came forward to ensure that we could still carry out our duties and remain independent. We thank you, John, for the many hours you have given to this community and wish you well.

Welcome

We welcome Jonathan Chitty as our new councillor and thank him for stepping forward. We now have 3 councillor vacancies. Another person has also come forward to fill one of these vacancies and we hope that this will take place at our November meeting. If you are interested in filling one of the 2 remaining vacancies, please contact the clerk or Cllr John Davies.

Traffic

The traffic calming scheme is moving forward slowly. Cllr John Davies is in discussions with County Highways to establish why we cannot extend the 30mph speed limit on the Kineton Road. We will keep you updated.

New Road

The new road by the bowling club will be called Avon Valley Way.

Field

Cllr Claxton has been liaising with the District Council Planning Department to establish what is required to change the use of the Church Lane field from agricultural to recreational. He has been informed that the first step is an on-site ecological survey. There will be a detailed report and costings later.

All Souls' Day Service at St Giles' Church

There will be an All Souls' Day service of Holy Communion at St Giles', Gaydon, on Friday 2nd November at 7.30pm. On All Souls' Day it is traditional for the church to remember those we love who have died. If there are people you would like remembered at the service, please add their names to the list in the Parish Church.

Funeral

The funeral service for Dr Rosemary Davies will be held at St Giles' Church on Friday, 2nd November, at 12.30pm.

Thanks

Sixty years ago (together with my then husband) I was living on the Gaydon Air base camp. We had a son, Michael, who tragically died at the age of three and is buried in the parish graveyard.

Although I did not visit the village in those days, I have visited his grave in the past and more recently, only to find that the condition of the graveyard and his memorial in particular required substantial work.

I contacted Chris Pickering, from his entry in the Gaydon magazine, who responded to my concerns immediately by going in to clear the vegetation around the memorial stone.

I then contacted Locke & Son who had previously cleaned the stone and asked them to clean and refurbish it again. I must say that the concern and care I received from Lucy and Rachael at Lockes's helped me over this

difficult time.

Knowing that the work had been done, I returned on 7th October to find that not only had the memorial been professionally cleaned etc. but that a colourful vase with flowers had been placed by it (together with some conkers!). I learnt that Mary Johnson and friend were responsible for this wonderful gesture. I visited her at the Village Shop to thank her, then on to thank the Locke ladies. Regrettably, it was not possible to meet Chris face-to-face to thank him. What also pleased me was to see that much work had been done to clean up other areas of the graveyard.

These few words are to explain my thanks to all of those who showed me, a complete stranger, the love and human kindness in my hour of need. Gaydon: I'll be back! Stephanie Levy, Bognor Regis, West Sussex;

I can be contacted on 01243 261722; email: Levy162@btinternet.com

Tysoe Festival of Remembrance

Tysoe Women's Institute are staging a Festival of Remembrance in

St Mary's Church in Tysoe Village from 6-19 November. They will be decorating the mediaeval church with hundreds of handmade poppies. There will also be a coffee morning in church on Saturday 10 November from 11am-3pm to raise funds for the Royal British Legion and everyone is invited to join the WI ladies for refreshments and homemade cake. JF

Mobile Library

The Library will visit the Telephone Box at Gaydon from 1.35-2.05pm on Monday 19th November.

Friendship Club

This month's meeting will be at 2.30pm at the home of Jan Ewers, 2 The Cottages, on Tuesday 27th.

Coffee Morning Saturday 10 November

This month's Coffee Morning and Bring-and-Buy will be held in the Village Hall at 11am on Saturday the 10th. Coffee and biscuits 50p. Please also visit the Church to look at the many books on sale there.

Book Sale in the Church 10 November

There will be a sale of books donated to the Church by the late John Davies of Banbury Road. Money raised will be used towards the upkeep of St Giles' which is at present undergoing essential repairs to the porch and chancel. John's gift is greatly appreciated.

Christmas Fair

St Giles' Church Gift Day and Christmas Fair
Father Christmas will be at the Village Hall on
Saturday 24 November at 2pm
There will be teas, mulled wine, home-made produce, gifts and raffles
It is the Church's Gift Day
when you are invited to donate money to the Parish Church in Gaydon
to help keep it open for Christenings, Weddings, Funerals, etc.
St Giles' Church is open every day so that you can spend some quiet moments in prayer or comtemplation.

Remembrance Day Service

St Giles' Church Gaydon on Sunday 11 November

Act of Remembrance at 10.45am under the Memorial Clock followed by Service at 11.30am inside the Church

Gaydon Village Over 65s Christmas Lunch

Sunday 2nd December 2018. Invitations will be going out shortly to all those who regularly attend this event, but if you have not been before and would like to, or if you have recently become "of age" then please let me know.

Pop-up Coffee!

Gaydon Village Hall on Tuesday 27 November from 10am-12 noon. We are a sixth form Employability Group from Round Oak School in Warwick and we are organising Pop up Cafes in the local area.

Our first event is a Christmas Coffee Morning at Gaydon village hall on Tuesday 27 November. We look forward to meeting you there!

Stir it up!

We also remember Christmas at the Remembrance Day service because we are already planning the candle-lit Crib Service that takes place on Christmas Eve every year, when we share the Church Christmas Cake with all the congregation. As it is such a huge cake, we ask parishioners to contribute to the ingredients, which are mixed in church on Stir-up Sunday, 25 November - the day after the Christmas Fair and Gift Day.

From Remembrance Day onwards there will be a list of things that you can donate towards the making of the Great Cake. Please look on the table at the back of the church and put your name down for some flour, currants or spices - or whatever you would like to give.

Village Hall News

The next meeting of the Village Hall Committee will take place on Monday 12 November at 8pm.

Shipston Home Nursing

Neighbourhood Watch

A silver SAAB convertible has been parked on Church Road by the old phone box for a number of weeks . The car interferes with the local residents' normal parking arrangements. Police confirm that the vehicle is currently taxed and insured and has not been reported as stolen. As it does not obstruct traffic there is nothing that they can do at the moment.

Nature Notes for October

A prolonged spell of glorious autumn weather has prompted an exceptional crop of fruit this year and the Village Apple Day was a great success with a huge variety of old cultivars. The Apple presses were constantly working and surprisingly Wasps were very few in attendance. This was predictable as all insects are scarce this year. The obvious butterfly species have not appeared save for one very hardy migrant, a large Hummingbird Hawk moth which was alone taking nectar from my garden flowers a few days ago. We must hope that they will recover next season.

A few years ago, the Parish Magazine had a cover entitled 'Death comes to Gaydon' with a cover photo of a Sparrow hawk plucking a pigeon. Last week I witnessed a similar incident in my garden, but this large female Sparrow Hawk has now taken three collared Doves and plucked all of them on my path. The other birds are eerily silent and hiding away in the bushes, somewhat traumatised I imagine. The following day I witnessed through my scope the 'reconaissance flight' over my garden, circling Church Road in a graceful glide with the odd wingbeat.

Pheasants are again a feature of our surrounding countryside, most of these will be artificially reared poults leaving the release pens of shooting syndicates. I already have two on my allotment every morning. A completely white bird has been seen in Pimple Lane; these albinos are often slipped into a batch of bought birds. It is considered bad luck to shoot one and any gun doing so is fined a bottle of Port!

It will soon be time to replenish bird tables - a slight chill in the air and mists, though frost free so far. If you have any hibernating butterflies cherish them and put in a cool safe spot.

The Polecats are still around the village; I spotted one by the church wall a week ago and there are a lot of mice and rats around for them at present. I am locking up my hens carefully and scrunching over a huge crop of Walnuts in every direction... Bernard Price

Gaydon Apple Day

Thank you to everyone who attended the first Apple Day to be held in Gaydon. The Millennium Group was only re-established in September so it was all hands to the presses to organise the event. Thanks to the committee, Sue, Catherine, Julia, Andy, Sue, Nigel and Ei for their hard work and ideas which helped make the day the success it was. Very special thanks to Gaydon's own Mary Berry, Georgina, for her rigorous judging of the cakes; Lois for the difficult job of judging the Harvest creatures; Maria for her inspired face painting; Corinne for selling the raffle tickets and Paul, LIndsey and Chris and their helpers for bringing the presses and working so long to produce the juice. Much was sampled on the day but some has been saved to make Gaydon's first batch of cider. We have raised enough cash to buy the case for the defibrillator and have since received some generous donations; so we are hopeful of reaching the target. It was good to see our honourary President, Mary Fox, a founding member of the original group. Watch this space to hear about our next event which should be after Christmas! Debbie Price

Christmas Fair Saturday 24 November

Please leave your donations at the Old Bakehouse or take them to the Hall on the morning of the Fair. Thank you!

Gaydon Village Store

Gaydon Village Store helps the environment. Please, please remember to bring a bag with you when you shop with us. When the plastic carrier bags that we currently supply are used up we shall replace them with recycled paper carriers, which of course can be 're-recycled'. These bags are not cheap and so we shall charge 10p for them. Please help us by remembering your own bag. Don't forget that you can order your Carpenters Christmas Turkeys and other meat through the shop. It is the same cost to you as buying direct from Carpenters but the shop gets a small discount, which helps us to keep serving you. Thank you and we look forward to seeing you in the shop soon. SR

Wedding

Congratulations to Amanda Caroline Morle and Michael Iain Smith who were married at All Saints' Church, Chadshunt, on Satuday 20 October. The ceremony was conducted by the Rev'd Nicki Chatterton.

Messy Church

Children's activities: the next Messy Church will take place on Sunday 18 November in Fenny Compton village hall at 3.30pm. For more details please ring Lesley on 01295 771177.

Vicar's Letter

Thank you to all of you who were involved in and came to the Forget-me-not! event on 13th October. It was a great success. We had wonderful displays from the Dassett and Temple Primary schools , songs from the Gaydon Voices, a Trench art exhibition and much more. We raised £408.80 for the much needed refurbishment of St George's Church at MOD Kineton.

The end of the First World War is not the only centenary being commemorated this year. It's also the centenary of the formation of Coventry Diocese. To celebrate this there has been a "Cross of Nails" pilgrimage between the 75 Church of England primary schools in Warwickshire which started in January.

The Cross of Nails is a symbol of reconciliation from the bombing of Coventry on 14 November 1940. Three mediaeval nails from the roof of the cathedral were bound together by the Reverend Dick Howard to form a Cross.

The pilgrimage of the "Cross of Nails" reached the Dassett Primary School 11th October and I had a wonderful time with the children the next day teaching them about reconciliation. Saying sorry, forgiveness and reconciliation sit together, but as children and as adults they can be very difficult concepts to understand and put into practice. Reverend Nicki Chatterton

Gaydon Casualties of the 1914-18 War

Every November on Remembrance Sunday we stand in front of the plaque under the memorial clock where the names of eight village men who died in the First World War are recorded. Have you ever wondered about the lives of these young lads from our village? I have done some research on them and a couple more who were closely associated with the village. You can read about them on the website www.gaydon.org.uk/mags/mag1811.html and you will find a printed sheet in the Church giving the same information. Martin Phelps

Those we remember - Gaydon Casualties of the 1914-1918 War

Every November on Remembrance Sunday we stand in front of the plaque recording eight names of village men who died in the First World War. Have you ever wondered about the lives of these young lads from our village?

Henry Richard (Harry) Boffin was born in Gaydon in 1890, the son of Robert and Elizabeth Anne Boffin. He was their 15th of 19 children. His father Robert came from Harbury and from 1887 worked in Gaydon as a wheelwright's blacksmith. In 1891 the family were living in a new cottage (Offchurch) recently built on Banbury Road by Bolton King. By 1901 they were in Oak Beams and were still there in 1911, when Henry is a carter. Henry was a private in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment posted to France in 1916. He was with the 1st/6th Battalion, in the battle of Pozieres Ridge, part of the Battle of the Somme, when he was killed on 17th August 1916 aged 25. His name is recorded on the Thiepval Memorial and his parents' memorial in Gaydon Churchyard.

Albert Checkley spent his early years in Gaydon, but he does not appear on the village war memorial plaque as he emigrated and served in the Canadian forces. He was the first son of Richard and Georgiana Checkley, born on 2nd June 1882 at Castle Farm, Gaydon and was baptised in the parish church on 16th July. The Checkley family had owned Castle Farm since 1863 (not the unrelated Checkley family in Gaydon more recently). Albert sailed to Quebec in 1896 and in 1911 was living with his wife in Ontario, where he was a merchant and in the local militia. On 20th September 1914 he enlisted as Sergeant with 15th Battalion Canadian Infantry in the Central Ontario Regiment. He died in the Battle of St Julien, part of the 2nd Battle of Ypres on 24th April 1915 aged 32 - killed in a chlorine gas attack. His death was reported in the Gaydon parish magazine of October 1915 and he is listed on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.

George Frederick Olds and his parents lived most of their lives in Gaydon, but George was born in Kineton in 1894, the 3rd of 5 children of Arthur Ernest and Emma Elizabeth Olds. The family had returned to Gaydon by 1900 and in 1901 were living in a now demolished cottage on Church Lane (the site of Corner Cottage). George was baptised in Gaydon on August 5th 1901 with his younger brother Jack. From 1910-1914 the family were living in Toll Gate Cottage and in 1911 George was a farm labourer. By September 1914 George had enlisted as a private in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and was in France by 7th April 1915. He was with the 15th Battalion in the Battle for High Wood, part of the Battle of the Somme, when he was killed on 30th August 1916 aged 21. His name is recorded on the Thiepval Memorial.

Gabriel George Overton was from Harbury and is on the Harbury War Memorials, but his strong links to Gaydon resulted in his mention in the Gaydon parish magazine. He was son of James William and Elizabeth Overton, born on the 1st November 1890 and baptized at Harbury 5th December 1894. In 1911 he was with his parents in Harbury and was working at the cement works. He married Emily Batten of Gaydon in 1914 and they made their home in Gaydon, possibly with her parents in Rose Cottage (now 5 Church Lane). Gabriel enlisted as a private in the Coldstream Guards in 1915 and was posted to France on 2nd November 1915. The parish magazine records him reported missing in November 1916 and in July 1917 it reported he had died on 15th September 1916 aged 25. He is buried in the Serre Road Cemetery no. 2, Somme and is listed on the War Memorial in Harbury and on the church Roll of Honour.

Harold Philpott was born in the autumn of 1894 in Gaydon, the last of 9 children of Samuel and Elizabeth Philpott and was baptised on 16th December. His father was a native of Gaydon and his parents first lived on Church Lane. From 1901-1914 the family were living in Offchurch Cottage and Harold was a farm labourer. He enlisted as a private in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1915, going to France in 1916. He was with the 2nd Battalion, in the Battle of Poelcapelle, part of the 3rd Battle of Ypres, when he was killed on 9th October 1917 aged 22. His name is recorded on the Tyne Cot Memorial.

David Randall was one of two brothers killed in the war. The fourth and youngest son of William and Harriett Randall (not Edwin & Caroline as stated on some websites), he belonged to a Gaydon family living in the village for at least 400 years. David was born in 1894 and baptised in Gaydon on 21st March 1894. His family were living in Church Lane - either Church Cottage barn or Field End where they were from 1901 onwards. By 1911 David was apprenticed as a carpenter and living with his parents at Field End. He enlisted in the Royal Engineers in December 1914, but should have declared he was an apprentice. He was posted to France on 19th December 1915 as a Pioneer with the 157th Field Company and was in action in the Somme in 1916, Ypres in 1917 and the Somme in 1918. David was wounded twice but each time was able to rejoin his unit after a few days in hospital. He was allowed leave to the UK in the summer and Christmas of 1917. He was killed on 28th March 1918 aged 24, at the Somme battle of Rosieres. His name is recorded on the Pozieres Cemetery memorial and his parents' gravestone in Gaydon churchyard.

George Sidney Randall was the brother of David Randall and the third son of William and Harriett Randall. Sidney was born in 1889 and baptised in Gaydon on 30th December 1889. By 1911 he had become a farm labourer, living in a farmer's household in Earlsdon, Coventry. He had enlisted by May 1915 and he was in France with the Essex Regiment from 22nd December 1915. He was killed in action near Arras with the 9th Battalion on 9th April 1917 aged 27 and is buried in Houdain Lane Cemetery, Tilloy-les-Moufflaines. He is also recorded on his parents' gravestone.

Andrew Webb was the son of Joseph and Harriet Webb, born in Gaydon April 1887, possibly in Byfield cottage, where his parents were in 1881 or one of the cottages previously in The Leys garden, where the family lived in 1891. He was baptized on 17th April 1887. In 1901 he was a "boy on farm" and lived with his family in The Leys - where his parents remained until 1914. In 1903 he enlisted in the Royal Garrison Artillery and in 1911 was a gunner in the 79th company in the barracks at Steamer Point Aden in Yemen. At the start of the war he was in the Army Reserve. He married in Pembroke in 1915 and was posted to France on 18th November 1915 as Corporal in the RGA. He was with the 50th Trench Mortar Battery when he was killed at Ypres on 14th Feb 1916 aged 29. His name is on the Menin Gate memorial.

John Septimus West is on the Gaydon memorial, but only had a very transient link to the village. He was son of Arthur and Emma West, born and baptized in Hampton Lucy in 1898, where his father was a gamekeeper. His father later became gamekeeper for Lord Willoughby de Broke in Combroke from 1906 to 1914, possibly in Gaydon 1916 to 1917, and in Chesterton from 1918. John enlisted as a private in the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1916 or 1917. He suffered severe gunshot wounds after only 10 days at the front and died a few days later in hospital at Etaples in France on 25th August 1918 aged 20. He is buried in Etaples Military Cemetery.

John (Jack) Wheildon was born in early 1889 son of John and Margaret Wheildon of Gaydon Farm and was baptized in Gaydon on 15th February. He is in the 1891 to 1911 census records at Gaydon Farm and by 1911 he was assisting his father on the farm. He joined the Warwickshire Yeomanry in 1906 and was called up on the day after war was declared in August 1914. Tragically, his mother died and was buried in Gaydon just before he left for the war in the East. He sailed with the Yeomanry for Egypt on 11th April 1915 and after being torpedoed and towed to Ireland for repairs they arrived in Alexandria on 24th Apr 1915. John was promoted to corporal and involved in the Gallipoli campaign in August 1815 where he was wounded. He was promoted to sergeant and in action in Palestine in 1917, when he was killed by a sniper's bullet in the 2nd battle of Gaza on 19th April 1917 aged 28. His name is on the memorial in the Jerusalem War Cemetery and his parents' gravestone in Gaydon churchyard.